


Highs, lows and big blows.

by letosatie



Series: The glory of Origin. [3]
Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bathroom Sex, Fluff and Crack, M/M, Sports, Swearing, but with a severe lack of sports action
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 13:55:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2112507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letosatie/pseuds/letosatie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's game three of the State of Origin Rugby League series and Erik arrives in New York to meet with Charles.  This time, there are more questions at stake than who will win the game.  Do they have anything in common that isn't League?  Can they create a relationship that's more than casual mind-blowing sex?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Highs, lows and big blows.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Ben Glover's report for Fox sports on the game that shall not be mentioned.
> 
> Series title from deathgod777's comment.
> 
>  
> 
> There is a serious lack of league in this story. I'm not sorry. In my head canon, there was only two games this season.
> 
>  
> 
> x

Erik’s nerves were really getting the better of him now. He had responded incorrectly to Emma’s comment, judging by the assessing tilt of her head, and he was finding his favourite New York meal completely unappetising. He put his fork down, gazed lovingly at Emma’s cigarette case. He hadn’t smoked for five years, since Charles casually mentioned he didn’t date smokers, and the memory of the proud glow in Charles’ ethereal blue eyes the next year when Erik said he’d given up, was what kept him from picking up another one.

“What is wrong with you, Lehnsherr?” 

“It’s a long and odd story,” he said dismissively.

“Tell it. I’ve still got plenty of baked salmon to eat, so entertain me.”

“This smells like a trap.”

“Everything smells like a trap to you, Lehnsherr, that’s how you survive in an ocean of sharks… literally.” She waved her fork at him, “Go on, you owe me a story. I told you about my sister and that hairy Canadian.”

Erik grunted then relented. “So… I met someone.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“Nothing is wrong with them. They, I mean he, is amazing, amazing, Jesus fuck, amazing.”

“Ok, he’s amazing. But Lehnsherr… you don’t like people. I’ve never known you to like someone, talk about someone, date someone, or even fuck someone. I was beginning to think you were attracted to sharks in a special way, or you were merely one of the more usual sociopaths.”

“I actually met him before I met you.” He quirked a brow at Emma’s offended stare, “I’ve been meeting him at the State of Origin games for ten years, and sleeping with him every year.”

“This is that football type game you watch? And you say you’ve been sleeping with him for ten years? But, what? Just at these matches?”

Erik nodded. She tilted her head again, “So what then? Skipping the frankly unbelievable news that you’ve had a casual annual fuck I didn’t know about, what changed? You made a move?”

“No, it wasn’t… It started out casually, fun, but… it’s been more for me for a while and last time, three weeks ago, he let slip he might want more too.” She raised her eyebrow at him. “That changed it. We’ve been skyping and texting. And I’m staying at his place tonight.” 

“And is your doubt tinged with regret or a realistic appreciation of your social dysfunction?”

“The latter. I do not want to mess this up.” He rubbed his palm over his face.

“Erik,” said Emma, and her unusual gentleness was frightening, “this is not personal but, you can’t not mess this up. That is what humans do, mess up with each other, large scale or small. And you, in particular, have made no attempt to be irresistible. Your only hope is that he likes you enough to forgive you until you’ve been together long enough that it would be more effort to leave than to put up with you.”

He stared at her. “Why do I hang out with you?”

“Because we understand each other,” she said, before sipping her wine.

Empty of dinner and full on Emma’s perpetual scorn, Erik made his way to meet Charles. They had agreed Erik would stay with Charles this time, but Erik was glancing down alleys and staring into shops until he realised he was looking for reasons not to go to Charles, to avoid facing up to the new, as yet undefined, parameters between them. He firmly told himself to buck up. If this thing was doomed, it would not be because Erik Lehnsherr was too chicken shit to show up.

Charles opened his door to a very grim Erik. He didn’t even notice though, exuberantly and emotionally embracing his guest, and clinging as if something was threatening to rip them apart. Something was, Erik concluded, it was his own pessimistic outlook. Perhaps the positive Charles way was better. Erik figured he should try it on.

“I’m so nervous,” Charles told him, Erik snorted in response, “but I’ve been waiting for this too.”

Erik, short on ideas for conversation, kissed him, bracing Charles’ face between his big palms and pausing with disbelief in between each press. 

Finally Charles pulled away. “Come on, let me show you around,” he said tugging Erik’s hand.

He led Erik into the living space, then the kitchen, showing him where to find mugs and the coffee, and the bathroom, showing him the towels. They were coyly glancing at each other, and Charles kept smiling when he caught Erik looking. They weren’t touching but Erik knew exactly the distance between his hands and the closest part of Charles, the urge to close that distance was magnetic. It was non-contact tango and it was lighting Charles up as much as it was frustrating Erik.

At the threshold of his bedroom Charles was visibly quivering. “This is the bedroom,” he said, “I assumed…” He stopped talking, fretting with his lip. There was obvious space cleared for a suitcase on the lowboy. 

Erik gratefully fell into the possibilities between them, winding his arms around Charles at the waist and saying, “Nothing is too fast, Charles. You have no idea what I’ve imagined between us over the years.” 

“Can’t be worse than the fantasies I’ve indulged myself in,” Charles told him breathlessly, his fingertips stroking the hairline at the back of Erik’s neck.

Erik raised an eyebrow, looked at the floor. “Uh, I… I uh, once named our kids,” he mumbled.

Charles’ laugh was butter-cream icing delight. “Go on then,” he prompted, seaming himself along Erik, knee to pecs, “What are they called?”

“JB, y’know, short for Jakob Brian, and Kylie Raven.”

“Kylie?”

“Yeah, after the first shark I made friends with.”

“Sharks make friends?” asked Charles, momentarily distracted.

“Sharks make friends with me,” boasted Erik, grinning.

“That’s because they think you’re one of their own, darling,” said Charles, eyeing all the teeth.

“Darling? Really?”

“Yes,” said Charles, smugly, “It means ‘favourite minion.’ That’s you.” He pressed two fingers either side of Erik’s collarbone, “Mine, remember.”

“Yours,” Erik rumbled into a kiss that turned into wandering and wondering hands everywhere, that turned into gasping and grunting, and then to groaning, “you smell so good,” and grinding out, “fuck, Charles, I can’t, I’m gonna…,” and submerging into eyes so blue he’d only ever seen blue like that in the ocean, and coming sticky and sweaty and scared, and thinking, ‘I’m in love, shit, fuck, I love him.’

He didn’t say anything though, only tipped Charles’ chin up with both his hands and began to make tiny, scraping bites along all the delicious length of neck. They had the luxury of hours laid out one in front of the other instead of rushing back to work or to catch a plane. It made Erik taste Charles drowsily, focus on learning which dips and hollows drew the best sounds from Charles when Erik licked them, instead of concentrating on committing the whole experience to memory as was his wont in their previous urgent, equivocal and sacred encounters. 

They also had the luxury of sleeping side by side, twining fingers together and resting feet on calves, waking up and wrestling until Charles had Erik pliant and wide eyed beneath him, before drifting back to sleep, this time boldly interlaced.

Over breakfast, Charles said, “New terms, Erik, Queensland wins and I move to Florida, New South Wales wins and you move here, they draw and we’ll have a long distance relationship. I am, you understand, praying for a white wash because I sunburn so easily.”

“Idiot,” said Erik.

They spent the morning finding things to do together that weren’t sex. They went for a run, watched Cosmos, played chess and argued about the healthcare policy. In the afternoon, they gave up trying to find things to do together that weren’t sex.

They watched Germany beating Brazil in the World Cup and ordered dinner in. They could have gone out but Charles refused to let Erik put clothes back on, though to be fair, he forwent clothes also, finding myriad excuses to fetch things from the lower cupboards and making Erik stretch to reach things from the top shelves. Charles managed the whole transaction with the delivery boy by peeking around a gap in the door. By the end of the match and dinner and the lazy resultant sex, they had run out of beer and Charles conceded they should probably put on clothes to acquire some. 

It was a stop-start process; an item of clothing donned, a feel copped, another item, another feel and so on. Erik had always been fascinated by Charles’ hands and now he took one and ran the point of his tongue in between two of the expressive fingers up to the join. It was similar to the first time he’d been inches from a Great White. He felt small and honoured, his heart pulsing annoyingly loudly. Trying to make a connection with a creature that didn’t need him and ignore the chance he could be devoured, nothing left. He nipped the tip of one finger with his front teeth. 

Charles groaned, “We don’t need beer… I just need you.”

Erik’s anger flicked on like a light bulb, illuminating Charles words and colouring them with Emma’s, until it just all seemed so unlikely. He couldn’t believe that statement of dependence; he wanted to but it sounded like flirting to him. He imagined himself in a long line of lovers, all pigeons scrapping over whatever crumbs Charles had for them. “This is a stupid bet, I want out. Raven is old enough, and you could get work in Florida. I can’t work here. And my Ma already lost my Pop this year.” 

“Woah. Ok, we can talk about this now,” said Charles, making subduing motions with his hands.

“Listen,” threatened Erik, “you can’t just assume I’ll be the one to move because I wasn’t still slutting around like you were in all the interims.”

“Excuse me?” Charles demanded, getting pink in the face. “How dare you? We weren’t together. There were never promises.”

“If you can’t promise me,” yelled Erik, lost to sense, “why would I roll over for you?” He snatched his coat up and slammed the door on his way out into the streets he’d just rejected.

Charles stared at the door, shocked and then confused, frantic and then achingly sad. 

In the early hours of the morning, he moved from his vigil and ventured out towards the Outback. He had barely slept. He looked mussed and shitty, little attempt at dressing for the occasion, his replica New South Wales 2005 match jersey and some jeans. If Erik wasn’t there he wasn’t sure he could actually stay to watch the game anyway. He threw up in a trash can from weariness and despair, but kept walking, kept walking, pushed forward by the minuscule nugget of hope the Erik might be there. It was somewhat like supporting New South Wales during the previous eight years. 

Through the heavy wooden door, and there was Erik, head in hands, at a table. Charles strode up to him and gripped his shoulder. 

“You can’t give up that easily,” growled Charles. He shook Erik. “This is too important.”

“You tell him,” called a Queensland supporter, “there’s a good chance we’ll win.”

“Go Queensland!” yelled someone else.

“Go Queensland,” Erik called back.

“That’s right,” said Charles wryly, “back some useless maroon wearing wankers but don’t back me.”

“It was not you I wasn’t backing. It was me.”

“Felt the same from this side though,” Charles told him.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Erik whispered.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Charles said, and it was really a question.

“I am here,” Erik reassured him, tangling his fingers in the lush, brown hair and tipping Charles head back.

“Oi,” protested a blue clad pub goer. “Keep your shitty maroon hands off our lad.”

Charles laughed, a happy, chiming sound. “Thanks my friend, I almost had incurable loser germs.” He winked at Erik and indicated the restrooms with his eyes and eyebrows, then dawdled toward them in a terrible attempt at nonchalance.

Erik put his head back in his hands and laughed. Then he got up and casually followed.

He was ambushed the second he walked through the restroom door, Charles’ lips, always soft compared to his, greeting and demanding and teasing until Erik attacked back. Erik tumbled into the nearest stall, dragging Charles against him. Charles was panting and trying to flip the latch on the door. Erik batted his hand away, turned the lock and stared him down. 

“Take. Your. Pants. Off.” 

Charles moaned and tore at the buttons, shoving the denim down. Erik spun him and bent him toward the cistern. Charles had to brace himself on it when Erik’s strong teeth savaged a portion of his arse cheek. He cried out in pain, surprise and desire, and Erik warned, “Shut up.”

Charles leaned forward, rested his cheek on his own arm and muzzled himself in the crook of his elbow as Erik’s tongue painted random patterns on Charles’ sphincter, currently gathered in tight, and his fingers tapped a broken rhythm on his perineum and balls. “I can feel that all over, fuck, I can feel it up my back, I can feel it in my knees, Erik,” Charles murmured.

Erik made a pleased sound, but said again, “Shut up, Charles.”

Charles began to push back onto Erik’s tongue, and he reached down, with the arm his face wasn’t buried in, to slot his fingers through with Erik’s where they curved on his hip. Erik snaked his other hand around Charles and began to slowly, smoothly twist and tug on Charles’ cock. When Charles was making a near constant, muffled hum, Erik took his own cock out, rubbed it up and down in the crack of Charles’ arse over the sensitive anus muscles. Charles was making half-formed cries and tossing his head round to try and see Erik, his eyes half lidded, trusting but unfocused. 

There were moments when Erik owned the ocean, when he was utilizing its thunderous velocity to speed to shore on a surfboard or hanging out with the natives with a tank and a regulator. He watched Charles’ solid thighs clench, his teeth bite down against shouting his ecstasy, and he grinned, feral and free, the self doubt of minutes ago now unrecognisable.

“I might be yours, Charles, but you are mine too,” he declared.

“Yes,” gasped Charles, spilling onto Erik’s hand and the abused stall floor. He made a few more strangled sounds as Erik smeared the come off his hand onto his dick and slid it back and forth in the crevice of Charles’ arse, squeezing the bite-marked cheeks together to massage his stuttering, rutting erection.

“I love state of Origin,” said Charles. Erik’s answer was a panicked grunt but he was quick enough to pull Charles’ precious league shirt out of the way before he splattered his own orgasmic evidence on Charles’ lower back. It took Erik a few huffs to recover then he yanked on the toilet roll and did his level best to clean up.

“I love you, Charles,” said Erik, leaning back against the wall and pulling Charles with him. “Is this… the same stall?”

Charles giggled. “Yes, yes it is.”

“Our first time. Did we even make it until the end of the match?”

“I don’t think so? I can’t tell you what happened in the second half of that match at any rate.”

“You look exactly the same, I don’t.”

“I have come back to get a piece of you three times a year for ten years, I think that speaks realistically to your attractiveness.”

Erik tightened his hold on Charles. “I’ll move here for you, Charles, I just… need to know it’s just me for you now… ‘cause I know some sharks personally, and I’ll sic them on any one who touches you, I swear it.” 

“Erik,” said Charles, “yes, just you.” He half turned in Erik’s arms, then gave up and looked at his upturned palm. “Erik,” Charles said tentatively, “there is another option. A while ago I was offered a job at the FBI in Quantico. I didn’t take it at the time because… Raven, I like where I am, also… maybe I was suffering under delusions of running into you on the street, you know, when I didn’t know you didn’t live here. I’d like this job, it requires both my genetics expertise and my psychology qualification.” Charles gripped Erik’s knee. “The thing is, I spoke to my friend about you, the one who offered me the position, and she said her boyfriend, who maps the seabed using sonar for the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, said they would love to talk to you about being on their team there. It’s not an Elasmobranchology educational department…”

“That’s ok, I’m not a teacher,” Erik interrupted.

“Yes,” said Charles, wiggling around in Erik’s arms. “It’s still… commuting, one of us or both of us, Moira and Sean manage it, …but it’s kind of halfway between your Ma and my sister and we’d both love the work.” 

“VIMS shark studies are legend.” 

“I thought it worth mentioning. It doesn’t have to be that, Erik, but I want to find something that works for us. You’re worth it for me.” 

“I know, me too. I shouldn’t have said what I said yesterday.” 

“Forgotten,” Charles promised him. 

Erik kissed Charles’ neck, his knuckles, his wrist. He whispered seductively into the shell of Charles’ ear, “I am never supporting those undeserving, referee cock-sucking, privileged, blue fucks though.”

Charles laughed. “And I,” he promised, “am never supporting those gutter playing, am-dram, maroon cock-stains.”

“I can live with that,” said Erik.

“But darling, will you handle it when I raise JB and Kylie to support the honourable State of New South Wales?”

“We are not raising our children blue!” roared Erik.

“Get the hell out of my bathroom,” came a shout through the door.

“Sorry Gateway,” called Charles.

“I’m just declaring devotion to your favourite customer Gateway,” Erik yelled.

“You’re my favourite customer, Lehnsherr,” Gateway said, “I hate New South Wales.”

Erik crowed and Charles groaned.

“Come on,” Erik said, pushing Charles to his feet, “I’ll buy you a beer.”


End file.
